“Where are we?”
“The cell.”
“What cell?”
“The one I first brought you to,” he said, and knelt in front of me. “Ara?”
I looked back from the stairs, distracted by the shadows and flames dancing along the walls, coming up fast behind us.
“Ara, I need to tell you something, but we don’t have much time, so”—he pulled a syringe from the pocket of his shirt—“I need you to listen, even if this doesn’t make sense. Okay?”
I nodded, staring at the needle.
He swallowed hard and unbuttoned his shirt, placing the syringe beside my leg. “I love you. I always have, ever since I first laid eyes on you, and I need you to know—”
“I don’t care,” I said, covering my ears. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“But Ara—”
“Please just tell me what’s up there.” I looked at the staircase as a shadow covered the wall at the bottom, getting closer.
“It’s them—the Lilithian Knights.” He rolled his collar over his shoulder and uncapped the lid from the syringe with his teeth.
“The Lilithian what?”
“They want their princess back.” He stopped and looked behind him, smiling.
“Get away from her!” A husky voice commanded the room, its bulk silhouette framing the doorway a second later. And as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my heart refused to believe what was there.
“Mike?”
“Ara. Run.” He reached out, and I launched off the bed, straight into his loving arms.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” I wailed. “I didn’t know if you—”
“Shh.” He whispered against my hair, squeezing me with familiar compassion. “It’s okay, you’re safe now. Are you okay?”
I nodded, but we both knew it was lie. My chest had been ripped open, leaving a jagged red scab down the middle, and when Mike looked into my eyes, seeing the bruises surrounding the black pupils, tears welled in his, forcing out over an enraged scowl.
We both turned our heads to look at Jason, who stood slowly, as if waiting for something.
“I’ll kill you,” Mike growled, stomping toward him.
“Mike, no!” I grabbed his arm. “He’ll kill you.”
“I wish him luck.” He shoved me back and a soft, thin pair of arms wrapped around me, cradling me to a bony shoulder.
“It’s okay, Amara—you’re safe now.”
I looked up from the sudden hug. “Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you later.” She tugged me along, too strong for me to fight, taking me further and further away from Mike—away from Jason. “For now, we need to get you out of here.”
“No. I can’t leave Mike. Jason will—”
“It’s okay. Really.”
“No, it’s not okay. Why should I listen to you? Let me go.”
“I’m here to help you.”
“No, you’re not.” I tugged my arm free. “I don’t know you, I don’t any of—”
“My name is Morgaine. I’m a friend of—”
“Lilithian Morgaine?” We stopped. The girl looked at me, her eyes liquid and round, her face framed by short-cropped cherry-red hair. “David’s Morgaine?”
She smiled and nodded. “It sounds nice when you say it like that. But, yes. I am she.”
“But, Jason said your people tortured David.”
“David was sent to us.” She looked down. “I was his punisher.”
“You?” I stepped closer. “You did that to him?”
“No.” She smiled, shaking her head. “I didn’t. I—”
A loud roar echoed off the walls like a mountaintop call, and the crack of sticks made my eyes widen. I pushed away from Morgaine’s arms and ran back to the cell, stopping dead at the sight of a body on the floor.
“Mike!”
Everything froze.
“Ara. You shouldn’t be here.” Mike spun around and pulled me into his chest, but my eyes went right past him, staying on Jason as he rose from the floor with a bloodied face.
“What did you do to him?” I gasped.
“I punched him,” Mike said with a self-satisfied grin.
“But…”
Jason slowly rolled his spine straight and drew his hands down from his face. The blackened bruising faded to yellow in front of my eyes before vanishing completely, leaving only a dried trail of blood over his upper lip.
“Ara”—Mike pushed me into Morgaine’s arms—“you need to get out of here.”
“Not without you,” I said, watching Mike roll the sleeves of his gray shirt up as he walked toward Jason. “What are you doing?”
“I have a score to settle,” he muttered, his shoulder rolling back.
I slipped my hand from Morgaine’s grip and grabbed Mike’s. “Just. Wait.”
Mike sighed. “What?”
I paused, not really knowing what my what was. Was it that I didn’t want him to hurt Jason? And if so, why?
I walked slowly over and stood before Jason, who looked up at me, confusion flooding his face. “I need my wedding ring back.”
After a defeated sigh, Jason reached into his pocket and removed my ring, placing it gently against my palm and folding my fingers around it, his touch lingering for a second. But he said nothing—just stared into me, his pale, murky-green eyes turning bright and emerald, almost like David’s used to be. The world stopped again for that one moment, and we stood there with our gazes locked, a wordless exchange of anguish, fear and sorrow confusing my heart.
I couldn’t hear him say it, but I saw the apology in his eyes, and I just wanted to hurt him for it.
Mike didn’t even give me the chance, though. He moved in and in one quick movement, Jason slammed against the wall, blood bursting out over his lip and chin. But the hatred I felt a breath ago was gone, taking all rational emotion with it. I felt no fear, no anger; just pity, distorted only by surprise when Mike stepped back and dropped a roundhouse kick to my torturer’s face, so fast he blurred as he spun.
Jason didn’t move, didn’t block. He landed on the ground in a limp heap, wearing each blow like a lifeless rag-doll. And Mike was relentless, laying his fists down on Jason’s skull, tearing his skin into bursting, blood-spitting lacerations.
“Mike?” I stepped forward, but he was crazed, lost to a battle fought within his core, like a man chopping a tree with an axe. “Mike!” I grabbed his arm. “Mike, stop.”
He turned to face me, wiping the dotted splatters of Jason’s blood from his chin. “Why? I was just getting started.”
My lips fell open, my eyes moving from the mess of blood and near irreparable damage on Jason’s face to the bloodied but unscathed fists of my best friend. “What are you?”
Morgaine came up behind us then and placed her arm around me. “Amara, when you accidentally bit Mike once—”
“You turned?” I asked, my eyes wide. “You’re like me?”
Mike dropped another swift blow down on Jason’s chest then turned to me. “It’s a piece of you I get to keep,” he said, offering a lopsided grin.
But the shock of his immortality was nothing in comparison to his ability to inflict such malicious damage. I looked down at Jason again and my heart flooded with a sick rush of pity. I’d never seen anyone so battered.
“Mike, we need to go,” Morgaine insisted.
“Not yet,” Mike said through closed teeth and started toward Jason again. “Not until he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I cried.
“Yeah. I can kill him, Ara,” he said lightly. “My venom’s like yours.”
“Wait.” I landed in front of Jason, my hand outstretched to Mike’s raised fist. “Don’t do it.”
“Ara? Get away from him,” Mike ordered in obvious disgust.
“No. It’s not ending this way, Mike,” I said and turned to look right into Jason’s eyes as he sat himself against the wall, struggling to catch his breath, his face hidden under a mask o
f red. “Jason?”
Only a wet cough replied.
“I promised myself that one day I would get revenge on you for what you did to me,” I said stiffly.
Jason’s brow pulled tightly over his wounded gaze. “What I did to you?” he scoffed, wiping his nose. “You will never know the true measure of what I have done.”
“That may be so.” I nodded. “But I’m going to let you live so that you can suffer the eternity I know pains you to exist in without Rochelle.” I pushed up from the wall and fell into Mike’s arms. “And one day I will find you, and I will hurt you.”
“Baby?” Mike placed both hands on my shoulders. “Are you sure about this?”
I nodded.
“Okay, come on then.” He turned me away from the cell and led me through the door, finally free.
“Ara?” Jason called.
“Ignore him, Ara,” Mike said coldly and pulled me along.
“Ara, please?” Jason called again.
“Keep walking,” Mike insisted.
“No! I want to hear what he has to say.” I lifted Mike’s arm over my head and stepped back to where Jason now stood in the middle of the cell. His eyes were soft and warm again, like the eyes I seemed to have loved in the field.
He reached out to me, barely able to stand, and offered the syringe. “Kill me.”
I shook my head, my teeth tightening in my mouth. “No. You can live. I want you to suffer!”
“I will suffer, Ara.” He offered the syringe again. “If you kill me, I will suffer more than you could possibly know.”
“You don’t deserve the kindness of death,” I said through my teeth. “Not for what you did to me, and not for what you did to Dav—”
“That’s enough.” Mike walked over and scooped me into his arms. “Let’s go.”
I cuddled into him, glancing back as we left the cell.
“For what it’s worth, Ara”—Jason slowly dropped to his knees—“I am sorry. You will never know how much I loved you.”
I opened my mouth to deliver my last words of hatred, but they stopped short, trapped on the small cry that came instead as Jason gasped and folded over, the giant syringe hanging from his chest—right where his cold, dead heart would beat if he were human anywhere inside.
Mike stopped walking, putting up no fight when I struggled out of his arms, my feet moving toward Jason before they even touched the ground.
“No.” I landed on my knees in front of him, dust stirring in a cloud as Jason fell forward, flat on the syringe. “No, no, no.”
“Oh my God!” Morgaine covered her mouth, disgusted. “What happened?”
“He had my venom.” I rolled him onto his back, expecting to see him writhe in agony. But he was dead still. “He took his own life.”
“Damn it!” Mike kicked the wall. “I wanted to kill it.”
“It’s over.” I stared at his limp carcass. No breath moved his chest; no life surrounded his body; no light in his vacant eyes. He was beautiful in this form, harmless.
I shrugged off Mike’s hold again and gently stroked a thick lock of hair from his brow, saying goodbye to him in the way I wished I had with David. “Now you can’t hurt me anymore.”
“Come on!” Mike said.
I took one last look at the vampire who destroyed my life as Mike lifted me in his strong, loving arms, and we stole away into the night.
27
Though I stared, numb and wordless, out the window the entire drive, when my feet finally touched the green grass of home and the homely chirping of a cricket reminded me of what normal once was, a sudden rise of grief struck me down.
Emily stopped dead halfway out the front door and covered her mouth, watching me fall to my knees. “What did they do to her?”
“I don’t know,” Mike practically yelled, squatting beside me. “She hasn’t said a goddamn word the entire four hours.”
A pair of bare feet appeared beside me, Emily’s hand landing softly on my back a second later, but nothing could stop the pain. All of it: the pictures, the memory of the hope we once had danced around in front of me. Happiness; together; our future. I let myself see it once.
Why? Why did I do that? Now it only hurt so much more.
David, I called to him in my heart. David, I’m so sorry.
“David?” Emily asked. “Why is she saying David?”
“Ara?” Mike placed a hand on my back. “What happened to David?”
Composure would not come long enough for me to speak. I gasped against the stolen breath, clutching my stomach, whimpering the pain of my broken soul.
“Ja—Jason threw him. On. On. The. Fire.” The last word rang out with a series of high-pitched sobs.
Mike’s hand fell away from my body and he slumped onto the ground beside me, the world stopping as each person around me realized what that meant.
“Oh no.” Emily covered her mouth, while Morgaine stood staring at nothing, and I cried; cried until everything inside me tore out through my soul, the pieces once capable of feeling now left alone on the ground, never to exist again. All we could do, all any of us could do was cry, sitting out here in the darkness of the place I used to call home. Home, with David.
Mike snapped out of his wordless grief and looked up at Morgaine. “Morg? Just—just—”
“Okay.” She touched his shaking shoulder then flipped her phone and walked across the road, hugging herself.
There was nothing we could do now; couldn’t even retrieve the body to bury it. There’d never be any closure, never be any farewell. He was gone. And I was alive, but completely dead inside. There was nothing, nothing left of me.
“Come on.” Mike stood and picked me up in his arms.
“Mike?” Emily grabbed his wrist. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said with an eerie depth of fear and emptiness. “I just need to get her inside, Em.”
My strong savior carried me, and I let him take me. I wanted to run away, wanted to die, but I hadn’t the strength to even give up. There was no air. I couldn’t breathe anymore, nor did I see the point, but I just kept on breathing anyway.
“Mike, I’m worried. Why is she breathing like that?”
“I don’t know, okay. All I know is that Jason got a quarter of the way through that list. I don’t even know what was officially on the fucking list.”
“Give her to me.” She reached across.
“No.” He cradled my face to his brow. “I need to help her.”
“You can’t, Mike.” Emily threaded her arms under my waist and legs, scooping me away from Mike. “You’re… you need to—”
“Okay.” He nodded, rubbing his face, and walked away.
“Em.” I wrapped my arms around her neck, holding on tighter than I’d ever held anything. “Em, he hurt me so much.”
“I know, Ara. I’m so sorry.” As Emily walked through the door and into my bathroom, someone else flicked on the light. I came from the secure warmth of my friend’s arms onto the cold, hard base of the shower tiles. “I’m just gonna put the water on, okay?”
Away from the safety of her embrace, I hugged my knees to my chest, gasping when the water came on cold for a second before heat mingled with the icy sprinkle, melting the first layer of blood from my skin.
She leaned into the shower and pushed her sleeves up her elbows, then grabbed the base of my dress. “Okay, lift your arms.”
“Em. Just leave me.” I shoved her hand off. “Just make it dark and leave me by myself.”
“Come on, Ara,” she said, “you need to take this off. You look like the corpse bride.”
“Just leave me be, Em. I just want to die.”
“Ara, please. You’re emotional and worn. You’ve been through hell, just let me clean you up and give you some blood.”
“No. No blood.” I shook my head. “Never again.”
Never.
I didn’t deserve to live. I took the one thing I ever wanted in this world and I killed i
t—for the bite, for the hunger, for the blood. Blood was a curse. I would never, never drink it again.
“Ara. Please. Just get this dress off at least. I can’t help you if you won’t let me.”
I tucked my hands into my chest and curled closer to the wall.
“Ur!” She stormed off.
Steam filled the bottom of the shower and rose up in soft white clouds, spiked with a distant scent of my strawberry shampoo and fading orange-chocolate. I folded my chest closer to my knees, wincing as the jagged wound down the center tugged, separating with the movement.
“Ara, it’s me,” a soft voice said through the steam, a hand reaching toward me. “It’s Morgaine.”
I looked up at her, watching her cherry-red hair turn almost burgundy as she leaned right into the shower, saturating the side of her face.
“Just leave me be. Let me grieve.”
“Okay.” She sat on the tiled ledge and, with a sponge in hand, gently wiped some blood from my chin. “You know, David talked with me about you when he came to me.”
I jerked away from the sponge.
She sighed and continued anyway. “We spent a lot of time catching up on the past while we were waiting to rescue you. He told me that you have nightmares sometimes, about the Immortal Damned?”
I nodded. But I never told David that.
“Well, if you be a good girl, get clean and drink some blood, I’ll tell you a way you can help them—maybe even free them.”
I looked up. “How?”
Morgaine smiled. “Uh-uh, self first, okay? You need to drink blood. Your face is swelling, and I’m worried it might scar a little if you die from blood loss.”
“What do you mean die? I can’t die.”
“No, you don’t stay dead, but you can die initially, and when you do, you regenerate with scars.”
“Morg, don’t tell her that, she’ll freak out,” Emily said, landing beside the shower. I hadn’t noticed her in the room. “Ara, Morg’s stretching the truth there. You only get a scar from the injury which causes death.”
Morgaine shrugged and smiled. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up, or we’ll have to get Mike in here to undress you.” She tugged the base of my dress. “Do you want him to see how bad you’re hurt?”
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